Harbinger Sound

Sleaford Mods' third Berlin show took place at Kreuzberg's legendary SO36 club.

The band took to the stage on a hot sweaty June night and played to a sold out audience. The show was captured by a german documentary crew and this limited edition album captures the highlights of that incendiary performance.

Amongst the 14 tracks on the album are favorites like "Tied Up In Nottz", "Jobseeker", "Fizzy" and the great crowd-pleaser and closer "Tweet, Tweet, Tweet".

The recording is testament to the connection between the band and those that follow them. Hear the glourious carnage and madness throughout the record's duration.

No language barriers, no borders, no restrictions of any kind.

This album also represents the first release on Harbinger Sound's new USA subsidiary label. Fuck England!

﻿Nottingham duo the Sleaford Mods are due to release their third ‘proper’ album on July 24th via abstract-punk label Harbinger Sound on vinyl, CD and download.

The album will be housed in a gatefold sleeve designed by Steve Lippert and was mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. Everything else was done by Sleaford Mods.

“Key Markets” was a large supermarket bang in the centre of Grantham from the early 1970's up until around 1980,” explains Jason Williamson. “My mum would take me there and I'd always have a large coke in a plastic orange cup surrounded by varnished wood trimmings and big lamp shades with flowers on them. Beige bricks with bright yellow points of sale and large black foam letters surrounded you and this is why we called the album 'Key Markets'. It's the continuation of the day to day and how we see it, the un-incredible landscape.”

“The album was recorded in various periods between summer 2014 through to October of that year. We worked fast as we normally do, the method was the same as the other albums and like the other two, the sound has naturally moved itself along. 'Key Markets' is in places quite abstract but it still deals heavily with the disorientation of modern existence. It still touches on character assassination, the delusion of grandeur and the pointlessness of government politics. It's a classic. Fuck em.”

‘Divide And Exit’ sees Sleaford Mods once again released on the elusive Nottingham-based low-profile Harbinger Sound label. Once dismissed around their native Nottingham as "two skip rats with a laptop" the last 12 months has seen the Sleaford Mods simply knock all their distractors clear out of the way.

The mounting hysteria surrounding their 2013 album " Austerity Dogs" has spread like chlamydia at a teenage house party and saw them topping many 'End of Year' lists worldwide. Along with a handful of limited 7" releases on labels as diverse as Matador and X-Mist, plus an extensive european touring programme have all helped to solidify their growing reputation as the 'ones to watch '. The Sleaford Mods duo of Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have also been busy throughout the year working on the follow up album which finally sees a release at the start of May.

"Divide and Exit " contains 14 new tracks all written over the last 12 months and the result is as immediately in your face as its vicious predecessor. Whilst Fearn's beats and loops will pull you up into the urgency of Sleaford Mods they also allow you to run the gauntlet from delibrate clumsy dance-floor swaggers to full-on punk throwabouts with them. Williamson is let free to spit out his unempathic litany of bile and anger towards the bloated and tedious. His verbal salvos and side-swipes are often savage and brutal , yet at turns, hilarious, but always spot on as Sleaford Mods rage and despair as the country sinks deeper into a cesspool of its own idiocy.

It's an album that doesn't have the privilege of luxury, indulgence or extravaganza and it will strike a resonant chord with many because it simply refuses to compromise. Many critics have attempted to tag and align the Sleaford Mods with other artists and have done little other than to advertise their own shortcomings and lack of knowledge.

If you need a pointer try and imagine an East Midlands take on Suicide that survived rave culture and looked to the Wu-Tang Clan for the escape hatch. The down to earth observations and story-telling of Ian Dury or Patrik Fitzgerald are maybe closer than any other names flung about in desperation.

If you wish to tag and place Sleaford Mods you're only limiting yourself.

Sleaford Mods started out sometime during 2006 whilst Jason Williamson was living in Nottingham. Born out of part frustration and part accident, it quickly found its feet as an aggressive verbal onslaught on all that is contrived and connected to the day-to-day hammer of low paid employment and domestic situations arising from that trap.

After a year of working ideas out in both the studio and in live performance around Nottingham, Williamson moved south and took the cause to London for a couple of years, before returning to Nottingham in 2009.

Soon after that he that he met Andrew Fearn and the Sleaford Mods became a duo. Fearn’s first work was on the production of “Wank” – the Mods’ fifth CDr album. Soon after he started stalking the studio and stage with Williamson. Just after the release of “Wank” the duo were invited to play a three day festival curated by Nottingham’s Rammel Club. During that weekend they were introduced to the Harbinger Sound label.

A meeting which – a year later – resulted in the release of “Austerity Dogs”.

Punk/electro/techno-noise trio Consumer Electronics return with an album of all-new studio material, following on from last year's acclaimed "Estuary English" LP and this year's "Repetition Reinforcement" 12" on Diagonal.

Featuring seven new studio tracks, 'History Of Sleepwalking', 'Knives Cut', 'Condition Of A Hole', 'Nothing Natural', 'The Push', 'Colour Climax' and 'Murder Your Masters' (the last track previously surfacing briefly as an ultra-rare gig only 7"), CE now features a twin vocal attack from the Best/Froelich husband-and-wife team, a furious tide of words spat out over a chaotic spew of mangled beats, bracing synths and state-of-the-art noise generation.

This is their most personal and political album yet. "Dollhouse Songs" was mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy for maximum effect. The record also comes complete with an inner sleeve featuring all the lyrics.

After having the NME announce him as "one to watch for 2015" Mark Wynn promptly quit music. Harbinger Sound spent the summer coaxing him out from early retirement and the result is "The Singles" album.

A compilation of 18 tracks culled from two years worth of limited self-released CDs. Wynn's scattershot avant-skank acoustic gobshitting blends despair, bleakness and humour. It then pulls apart any worthless comparisions to The Fall, Wreckless Eric, Patrik Fitzgerald, etc with his irreverent, awkward but smart lo-fi songs. After spending the autumn touring with Sleaford Mods , Wynn is now back in the game as one to watch for 2016.

This album features such classics as "Rip Off The Fall" and "She Fancies Me That One In Age Concern".

"My Descent Into Capital" represents the most ambitious recording from this London-based duo to date. Even if they're taking influence from minimal synth, post-punk or early industrial sides, Circuit Breaker are unmistakably contemporary with their delivery.

Forging together metallic drum machines, propulsive synth lines and stark guitar degradation into bold , simple and effective songs about down-trodden themes of isolation, discontentment and the true horror of work. This album transgresses any simple nostalgia for its musical forefathers and showcases a band with their eyes fixed firmly on the future.

Any obvious reference points are contorted and stretched to the point where they are transformed into something new. After ten years of obscurity and a refusal to go away, and after two well-received records on Tombed Visions, this album is their first full-length album, and first for abstract-punk imprint Harbinger Sound.

After many shows with supporting Harbinger Sound mainstays Sleaford Mods, the duo are about to embark on an extensive tour with new label mates Consumer Electronics early next year. The album was mastered by Barry Grint at Alchemy. "

Phil Julian is a UK based sound artist, composer and improviser active since the late 1990′s, with a prolific output under the Cheapmachines alias and his own name.

His work has been released on a catalogue of imprints and encompasses sonic textures ranging from harsh squalls of noise to compositions structured around hyper-minimalistic timbres and drones. Studio recordings and live performances within Europe and North America have focused on the use of electronics, particularly unstable and/or chaotic systems e.g. modular synthesisers, feedback, contact microphones, objects and surfaces and computer based works.

“TRACE” was recorded at Stockholm's EMS Elektronmusikstudion during Julian's Guest Composer residency in 2013. Using a combination of the vintage analogue equipment at EMS and various computer processes, the material on “TRACE” was recorded and mixed specifically for diffusion over the Audiorama 17.4 surround sound system, custom built and installed inside the decommissioned torpedo workshop on Skeppsholmen island in Stockholm. “Open Form” which takes up the A side of the release is made up of much shorter pieces recorded over the two week residency. “Corona” is an improvised piece using analogue electronics only and “Arrival” uses a custom computer patch alongside a complex set of processes running on the huge EMS Buchla synthesiser.

The recordings combine the dynamics and space associated with modern composition and electroacoustic works with the density and abrasive qualities more often encountered in noise and contemporary computer music.

"Suri Gruti" sees everyone's favorite Geneva quartet take a side step into expanding their signature sound as captured on their previous "Morse" album.

This record features two extensive side-long pieces created whilst sound tracking Man Ray movies. The sharp minimal post punk riffs and drums are still hypnotically repetitive .whilst the band still bursts with that frantic energy that sounds like it's straining to contain itself.

If you're looking for a contemporary meeting between the likes of The Ex and Kleenex without any whiff of nostalgia. This EP contains that collision point.

"The second album from UK hardcore engine The Lowest Form, Personal Space sees the band cutting through a comedown fug of feedback, sharp butterflyknife guitars flashing deadly over a wasteground rubble of noise.

Songs drawn up from discord, songs of marshalled cacophony, coils of scritching guitars break apart and reform, coalescing around insistent basslines and heavy drumbeats, before splintering again. It's hardcore constructed from textured noise as much as from breakdowns and riffs, rumbling infectious chants emerging from the wavering clamor, the vile keening of consciousness's half-known edges, noise in the grain of it all, noise as bedrock, an abrasive acid bath of fuzz, susurration and machinewhirr.

"SMASH MY FUCKIN' HEAD AGAINST THE WALL" is the line that opens it up, rising out of Interplanetary Bad Boy's hissing swell. Driven through the album are anguished explorations of interior/exterior limits, whirling around viciously in the grubby borders of your skull, spinning hopelessly in the cosmic of the aether, untethered, higher than the sky but way down in the muck.

From Gak Attack's claustrophobic pogo or Last Smash's drawling thump to Star Slammers manic tumble and Dread Future's rolling barrage, The Lowest Form have brought together another LP of murdered-out panicattack punk, lithe and unleashed, born of bad vibes and background radiation, an album at once uncomfortably close and fully heavy." -Joe Briggs

This first edition comes with a 20 page A4 booklet featuring Mark's musings on life, the toilet gig circuit and many other things. Limited to #1000 copies"

Here we go again ! Another 18 tracks taken from Mark Wynn's vast archives. After the success of the previous volume and his acclaimed support slots following Sleaford Mods around Europe.

Harbinger Sound once again digs deep into the vaults and pulls out a selection of tunes that previously appeared on self-released CDrs over the last couple of years. No-one is safe from Mark's with, not even himself.

At long last a reissue on vinyl for this long lost and scarce UK Hardcore punk classic. Originally self-released in 1993 in a very small run. Original copies now command £100 upwards on the collectors market.

This reissue collects that original material alongside tracks from that same period released in Japan only. This new edition was put together by the band themselves. It features an extensive collection of unseen photographs and sleeve notes housed in a swanky gatefold sleeve. The same iconic front cover used on the original album graces this edition too.

This version is limited to 500 copies.

Tracklisting:1. Happy Spastic 2. A Swindle3. Wall Street Crash 4. Ronnie Was A Rebel Pt 1 5. Ronnie Was A Rebel Pt 2 6. The Alcoholic 7. Secret Men 8. Government Snares9. Edge Of A Knife 10. Lying On Your Side 11. Making A Shilling 12. Farmyard... Drunk Again !

Nachthexen are a band - possibly a coven - from Sheffield making fresh, fiery and eminently danceable synth punk. This record follows on and includes re-released songs from their excellent sold out cassette The Other (2015) and self-titled 7" (2016).

Touching on themes of social anxiety and isolation, feminist protest, and sanctuary in sisterhood, the witch is a fitting figure for this sound. Striking, minimalist artwork based on lunar cycle imagery in the band's signature yellow and black adds to an aesthetic of outsider occultism that complements the lyric sheet perfectly.

Filter that eeriness through the ferocity of classic punk, and the catchiness of 80s post-punk and new wave - and you start to arrive at somewhere near their sound. Tight and taut drums and bass anchor the songs with sustained rhythms, while the synth soars above and the great, in-your-face vocals push at the forefront.

At times the interplay between rumbling bass and gothic synth takes things to a dark magical place where Goblin's Suspiria, Gary Numan, and post-punks Siekiera might also converge, which I think is pretty remarkable. On the other hand, something of the punchy attitude and ear-worm hooks recalls the spirit of women pushing punk forward in the late 70s and 80s - Kleenex springs to mind, or the rowdy vocals of Suicide Squad.

However, I have the feeling that no attempt to settle on an accurate historical comparison for this band could be successful. There is something very new and inimitable about this record's sorcery - and after the 'fuck you' sentiment of the final track 'Cheer Up Luv' builds to a fevered climax, it will stay with you for days. (KY Ellie - Good Throb / Snob)